Last updated: July 7, 2018
Welcome to our overwhelmingly exciting Privacy Policy & Disclosure page. I’ll try my best to make this as interesting and fun-to-read as possible, but there’s only so much sass I can add to something as captivating as this.
If you’re here because you’ve been sucked into the Pinterest wormhole of wanderlust, insomnia kicked in, and you’re desperately trying to find anything to put you to bed, then this is the right place. If you’re here because you’re a fellow blogger looking for ideas for your privacy policy, feel free to take what you need!
Either way, you’re here because you want to talk about your personal information. While I can’t help you with your Tinder profile, I can tell you how this Website collects, uses, and stores your personal information as well as any and all financial relationships (even the embarrassing ones) I have with third parties. Sound good?
Since it’s just me typing away behind the scenes, I’m clearly the writer, editor, website designer, developer, social media manager, coffee go-getter, and yep… the Data Protection Officer. If you have any questions, feel free to email me and we can talk about your personal information 😉
Affiliate Disclaimer
The FTC requires us to disclose all financial relationships with third parties. A third party is a fancy word for any company, product, brand, website, etc. that I financially benefit from by promoting them or their products.
An example of this would be if I promote an Osprey Porter 46L backpack that I love and include a link for you to purchase one too! This link may earn me a commission at no cost to you (actually I try and find you the best deals). Since I financially benefit from your purchase, I must disclose this information.
Don’t worry, I only promote products that I absolutely love. I know many of you rely on this site for solid, trusted advice, so if I start promoting random things just to make some money, I’ll easily lose your trust and respect. I don’t want that. You don’t want that. We won’t let that happen.
And to make the lawyers happy….
“Max Pankow is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. The products I choose to share are not endorsed by the brand, and as such, my recommendations remain unbiased and reflect my own opinion.”
Image Disclaimer
While I love when you share my pictures and re-pin my posts, please link them back to me! How else will everyone know where you saw such stellar pics?
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and images have been taken by me and/or created by me and are property of www.maxpankow.com. If an image is not mine, I will credit the original source of the image. If I cannot locate the photographer, I will state where I found the picture. If you see an image that belongs to you, please let me know and I’ll be happy to give you proper credit. Dude, you rock!
Medical Disclaimer
This Website is a documentation of my life (albeit boring at times). Although I am a Certified Personal Trainer & Fitness Nutrition Specialist, I am NOT a registered dietitian or healthcare professional. The information on this website was obtained through research, personal/client experiences, and collaboration with other health/fitness professionals. The views I express are mine alone and should not be taken as medical advice. Please consult your doctor prior to making any changes in your diet and/or fitness program.
Privacy Policy
I’ll try to keep this interesting but here it goes….
Max Pankow found at https://www.maxpankow.com (“Website”) is governed by the following (“Privacy Policy”). We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to inform you of what information we collect and how it may be used. This statement applies only to this Website.
What Information We Collect & How We Use It
Information You Voluntarily Submit to the Website: Sometimes you just hand over your information such as when you input your name and email to download a PDF, subscribe to the newsletter, leave a comment, or reach out via a contact form. Thanks for this! We’re happy to help and enjoy connecting with you.
Information We Collect From Others: We may receive information from other sources. If you purchase a product using an affiliate link, that company may provide us with any information necessary for fulfillment.
Automatically Collected Information: This happens on most websites. We use Google Analytics and JetPack plugins. As a result, information such as your IP address, operating system type, browser type, referring website, pages you viewed, links clicked, and the dates/times when you accessed the website are recorded. Don’t worry, I can’t tell its you re-reading the same post over and over (I don’t see your name in this information). This is just what the fancy internet robots do to collect information about the user to analyze trends and improve the future user experience. Pretty cool, huh?
Cookies: We may also log information using (computer) cookies, which are small data files stored on your browser by the Website. We may use both session cookies, which expire when you close your browser, and persistent cookies, which stay on your browser until deleted, to provide you with a more personalized experience on the Website.
How Your Information May Be Used
We may use the information collected in the following ways:
- To operate and maintain the Website;
- To send you promotional information, such as cute newsletters. If you hate all our awesome updates, each email will have the option to opt out (unsubscribe);
- To send you administrative communications, such as administrative emails, confirmation emails, technical notices, updates on policies, or security alerts;
- To respond to your amazing comments or inquiries;
- To provide you with user support;
- To track and measure advertising on the Website;
- To protect, investigate, and deter against unauthorized or illegal activity.
Third Party Use of Personal Information
We may share your information with third parties when you explicitly authorize us to share your information.
Additionally, the Website may use third-party service providers to service various aspects of the Website. This means that I can’t do everything on my own. I might use Google Analytics to track data, Mad Mimi to send emails, etc. While I think I’m amazing, I know I’m not Super Woman (or a computer genius) and therefore need help from third parties to keep this Website functioning properly. Note that each third-party service provider’s use of your personal information is dictated by their respective privacy policies.
This Website currently uses the following third-party service providers:
Google Analytics – This service tracks Website usage and provides information such as referring websites and user actions on the Website. Google Analytics may capture your IP address, but no other personal information is captured by Google Analytics.
Mad Mimi – This service is used for delivery of email updates and newsletters. We store your name and email address for purposes of delivering such communications. Please refer to Mad Mimi’s privacy policy for further information.
Akismet — Akismet collects information about visitors who comment on the Website that uses our Akismet anti-spam service (www.maxpankow.com). The information collected could include the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).
At this time, your personal information is not shared with any other third-party applications. This list may be amended from time to time in the Website’s sole discretion.
Except when required by law, we will not sell, distribute, or reveal your email addresses or other personal information without your consent; however, we may disclose or transfer personal information collected through the Website to third parties who acquire all or a portion of our business, which may be the result of a merger, consolidation, or purchase of all or a portion of our assets, or in connection with any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding brought by or against us.
How Long We Retain Your Data
I want to be friends for life! If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
If you want your information to be deleted, simply click “unsubscribe” in any email from us or email me and I’d be happy to delete this once-stellar BFF4E relationship.
Plugins
Plugin is a fancy word for a “plug in software feature” such as the tool we use to share posts on social media or the tool we use to add my picture in the About Me section. This Website uses plugins to keep it running smoothly. Below are the specific plugins we use that deal with data in some form and how they follow the GDPR rules:
Contact Form 7: We use Contact Forms 7 on our Contact page, which doesn’t collect any unnecessary data. Apart from your message/subject title, all we ask for is your email and name so we can get back to you. There is also a consent checkbox on the form to ensure you understand that your data (aka name/email) will be stored. Please refer to Contact Form 7’s privacy policy for further information.
Genesis eNews Extended: We have a plugin that lets us easily upload up our Mad Mimi email opt-ins. If you try to opt in, you are required to enter your name and email, as well as confirm (via email) that you would like to subscribe to this opt-in. Please refer to Mad Mimi’s privacy policy for further information. Please refer to Mad Mimi’s privacy policy for further information.
Jetpack: We have a plugin called Jetpack that helps us monitor comments, block spam, allow you to subscribe to comments, use Gravatar cards (your pretty picture next to your name), etc. Detailed information about Jetpack comments and gravatars is included in the “Comments” section below. You can read more about Jetpack’s (aka Automatic) privacy policy here.
Shareaholic: We have a plugin that allows you to effortlessly share our posts via cute little buttons. This plugin is called Shareaholic. Shareaholic does not ask, store, or share your private information. You can learn more about the Shareaholic privacy policy here.
Social Warfare: The share buttons on this site are powered by Social Warfare. Social Warfare does not collect any personal data from the people who visit this site and click on a share button. Social Warfare is GDPR compliant and more information about their privacy policy can be found here.
Yoast SEO: We have Yoast installed on our site for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes. Yoast deals with website data, not personal data. Learn more about Yoast’s privacy policy here.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Publicly Visible Information
If you choose to leave a comment, people will see your, avatar, name and any website information you leave.
Anonymous Data
From time to time, we may use anonymous data. Anonymous data does not identify you alone, or when combined with data from other parties. This type of anonymous data may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Examples of this anonymous data may include analytics or information collected from cookies.
Cookies
This Website uses cookies to store visitors’ preferences, record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, ensure that visitors are not repeatedly sent the same banner ads, customized Website content based on visitors’ browser type or other information that the visitor sends. Cookies may also be used by third-party services, such as Google Analytics, as described herein.
That said, users like you can (at any time) prevent the setting of cookies, by the Website, by using a corresponding setting of your internet browser and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. However, if users deactivate the setting of cookies in your Internet browser, not all functions of our Website may be entirely usable.
Advertising
At this time, the Website does not accept, endorse, or publish any advertisements.
Affiliate Programs
The Website may engage in affiliate marketing, which is done by embedding tracking links into the Website. If you click on a link for an affiliate partnership, a cookie will be placed on your browser to track any sales for purposes of commissions. I know this sounds creepy, but basically we recommend great products from time to time that we truly believe will bring you value. If you choose to buy said product based on our recommendation, then we earn a small commission from the company as a thank you for recommending them. Make sense?
Here are the affiliate programs we’re part of:
Agoda: I use agoda as my primary search engine in SE Asia and may include affiliate links when I recommend places to stay. You can read more about agoda’s privacy policy here.
AirBnb: I love booking Airbnbs while traveling (and working). I may included affiliate links when recommending or sharing accommodation information. You can read more about AirBnb’s privacy policy here.
Amazon: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This program utilizes cookies to track visits for the purposes of assigning commission on these sales.
BlueHost: I mention several hosting services on this blog, one being BlueHost. While BlueHost is great, I currently use InMotion Hosting. Either way, to see BlueHost’s privacy policy, click here.
Booking.com: I use Booking.com affiliate links throughout this site when I recommend hotels or places to stay. You can read more about how Booking handles privacy/data here.
CJ: CJ Affiliate is another affiliate I use for several programs, including Skyscanner. You can read their privacy policy here (via Conversant LLC).
HotelsCombined: This is a great search engine that I recommend for finding cheap hotel deals. You can read more about their privacy policy here.
InMotion Hosting: I currently use InMotion Hosting as my hosting service. You can read more about their Privacy Policy here.
iTunes: I include several links to free and paid apps in the iTunes stores. You can read their privacy policy here.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (via Teachable): I’m an affiliate for the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course. Their affiliate program is handled through Teachable and you can see their privacy policy here.
Performance Horizon: I use this company to share affiliate links and recommendations regarding HostelWorld. Read more about their privacy policy here.
ShareASale: I use ShareASale for a few different affiliate programs including Studiopress and Tailwind. Here’s their terms of use.
Superstar Blogging: I’m an affiliate for Matt’s Superstar Blogging courses, as I have used them and love them. You can read his privacy policy here.
Team Beachbody: I am a Team Beachbody Coach and make commission off of Beachbody products, challenge groups, and coaching services. You can read about their privacy policy here.
WorldNomads: I often recommend WorldNomads for travel insurance, as it’s saved my butt many times on the road. See their Privacy Policy here.
VIPKID: I am a VIPKID teacher and an affiliate for their teacher referral program. Learn more here.
Newsletters
On the Website, you may subscribe to our newsletter, which may be used for advertising purposes. All newsletters sent may contain tracking pixels. The pixel is embedded in emails and allows an analysis of the success of online marketing campaigns. Because of these tracking pixels, we may see if and when you open an email and which links within the email you click. Also, this allows the Website to adapt the content of future newsletters to the interests of the user. This behavior will not be passed on to third parties.
Rights Related to Your Personal Information
- Opt-out – We have unsubscribe links in all our emails, so if you feel like unsubscribing then you can easily do that. You can also email us at max@maxpankow.com to be removed from our mailing list.
- Access – If you’d like, you can access the personal information we have about you any time by submitting a request to max@maxpankow.com.
- Amend – You may contact us at max@maxpankow.com to amend or update your personal information.
- Forget – In certain situations, you may request that we erase or forget your personal data. To do so, please submit a request to max@maxpankow.com.
Please note that we may need to retain certain information for record keeping purposes or to complete transactions, or when required by law.
Sensitive Personal Information
At no time should you submit sensitive personal information to the Website. This includes your social security number, information regarding race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health information, criminal background, or trade union memberships. If you elect to submit such information to us, it will be subject to this Privacy Policy.
Children’s Information
The Website does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 16. If a parent or guardian believes that the Website has personally identifiable information of a child under the age of 16 in its database, please contact us immediately at max@maxpankow.com and we will use our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.
Contact Information
If any of the above was unclear, feel free to contact us at max@maxpankow.com for questions related to this Privacy Policy.
